Eternal Rhythm and the first few tracks on The Sonet Recordings come pretty close to the ragadronebuzz madness that Cherry conjured for The Holy Mountain soundtrack.  Yeah, Mr. Sharrock is on Eternal Rhythm; and true, he's not "all up on the track", but some nice playing nevertheless.  Both recommended. [BD]

Organic Music Society is basically live on the commune in the early '70s and is very intriguing as a historical document, but not the finest Don Cherry record you're ever going to hear - wild cover illustration and inside the gatefold is hand-lettered w/ pictures of the whole extended family (presumably a young Neneh Cherry is among the children though I can't say for sure - reminiscent of Courtney Love being one of the children in the picture on the back of the Grateful Dead's Aoxomoxoa) - performances of "The Creator has a Master Plan" and something credited to Terry Riley. [BB]

The Cherry side of Actions is all over the place, in the form of a continuous suite with very disparate parts. Opens with some uptempo raga singing with the horns wailing in back, sounding like a late 70's Breuker record, Cherry & (I think) Breuker coming forward & then some full band "hits" and Brotzmann blasts in ... that's the first two minutes. The Pendrecki piece is pretty wild, with some sounds that are pretty typically his (the beating, slippery microtonal "clouds of sound" that anyone who's heard the Threnody will recognize; the sudden structural shifts, division of the orchestra into opposing groups) but definitely with the sound of an early 70's euro improv group, and with the individual voices of the players showing thru (Brotz & Rypdal sounding most recognizable on first listening). A tangled mess of notated and improvised material, that would take hearing multiple performances to really pick apart (I wish) ... according to the notes, each subsection begins with a notated "action" which is the basis for further improvisation. This simply blows most of the "third stream" stuff I've heard into the wastebasket of history. [JF]

Relativity Suite [1973] is my personal favourite. It was recorded with the Jazz Composers Orchestra [including Bley, Lowe, Haden Blackwell, Redman] in 1973. Tantra and Trans-love Airways stand out. [JCOA records, not on CD] Also check out Eternal Now, recorded in 1974 with Bothen, Berger, Rosengren [from Don's Swedish scene] [sonet, no cd]. Finally, Don with Latif Khan [tablas]; Music Sangam. [Europa 78, no cd]. CDs [from my vinyl] availiable in exchange for copies of rare Sun Ra 70s releases. msc6756@hotmail.com
[Michael C]